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With Weed Beach due for a million-dollar overhaul, Paul Zajkowski might be in the minority. He said he likes the beach the way it is. "Fifty years for a building," he said, referring to the bathhouse at the beach. "That's a pretty long time. It looks fine to me."
But the Board of Selectmen has approved $2 million toward a Weed Beach project, which has been in the works since 2001, with another $1.6 million to be voted on at a later meeting. The shovel will hit the sand at the end of next summer.
"The entire community would benefit from this much-needed and overdue project. We issue approximately 7,050 beach permits to residents per year. Darien has a total of 6,437 resident households so I imagine almost every household has one," said Susan Swiatek, director of parks and recreation for Darien.
"Yes, we hope for full funding of the project so the improvements so many people have spent so much time on can become reality. It has been a long road, our current facilities have suffered and it is time to put something back into what should be the jewel of Darien," Swiatek said.
The work had Weed Beach had been on hold since 2008.
Longtime Darien resident Peter Romas had just finished swimming his morning laps when he said, "I live in Florida, but come back home to Darien every summer. I come here once or twice a day to swim laps. I hope they clean up some of the rocks, too."
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